George Whitman, a pillar of Paris literary life for more than a half-century and owner of the city's most famous English-language bookstore, died yesterday at 98.
A Salem native, Whitman ran Shakespeare and Company, an iconic bookstore on the banks of the Seine River, for 60 years.
He died yesterday in his apartment above the bookstore, two days after his 98th birthday and two months after suffering a stroke, the store announced on its website.
Shakespeare and Company was both a center of literary life and a refuge for visitors, including many Americans, who came to the City of Light seeking a roof over their heads.
"I stayed there for like three nights," said Jim McAllister, a Salem historian. "I wrote to him ... and he wrote back and said, 'I've been waiting 50 years to play host to somebody from my hometown of Salem.'"
Four years ago, former Salem police Chief Robert St. Pierre and his wife stopped by the bookstore and were ushered to the fourth floor of the ramshackle building, where an aged but still vibrant Whitman greeted them and shared stories of his hometown.
"He was holding court from bed," St. Pierre said.
Whitman grew up on Naples Road in Salem, the son of a physics teacher at the former Salem Teachers College, now Salem State University.
After graduating from Boston University with a degree in journalism in 1935, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. During World War II, he was trained as a medical warrant officer and treated the wounded at hospitals across Europe, according to the store's statement.
In 1951, he bought an Arab grocery directly across from the Notre Dame cathedral and opened a bookstore named Le Mistral. He later changed the name to Shakespeare and Company after the legendary 1920s bookstore frequented by the likes of Joyce, Hemingway and Fitzgerald.
Whitman's Shakespeare and Company was no slouch, however, hosting, among its overnight guests, a new breed of American writer: Allen Ginsberg, Langston Hughes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and James Jones.
Sunday tea at Shakespeare and Company, which often featured readings by famous authors, became a Paris tradition.
"He was open 365 days a year from noon to night," said Anne Driscoll, a Swampscott writer who wrote a profile of Whitman and his famous store. "For the longest time, he was the only English-language bookstore" in Paris.
Driscoll said she, too, stayed in the bookstore, which often had a half-dozen overnight guests.
"Those were three of the most bohemian days of my life," she said with a laugh.
The store was shuttered yesterday, and longtime customers, students and anonymous book-lovers lit candles on its stoop to pay their respects.
The store will live on under the management of Whitman's daughter, Sylvia Whitman. In an interview earlier this year, she summed up the unique store this way: "My father says it's a Socialist utopia masquerading as a bookstore."
Whitman was made an officer of arts and letters by the French Culture Ministry in 2006.
He is to be buried in the city's venerable Pere Lachaise cemetery, where the remains of literary giants including Oscar Wilde and Balzac rest, the posting said.
The date of the funeral has not been set.
Material from The Associated Press was used in this article.
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